[chaotic13]

I do not engage in self injury, at least not physically ( mentally I do a pretty good job injuring myself). I have a question regarding how you first developed this behavior. If you can remember back to when you first figured out that SI provided you some temporary emotional benefit. I would like to hear your perspective on this since I have no first hand knowledge. My question might even reflect what little I understand about SI.

Do you think a child becoming aware at that a lot of people not only have self injury thoughts, but actually carry them out, could trigger a turning point between thinking about in and trying it?

Just so you understand the context in which I ask this question. My child who is elementary age experience a lot of intense anxiety at times and often speaks about harming himself. I know this is not atypical but some other anxiety behaviors he demonstrates suggest to me the potential is there and I shouldn't ignore it. I don't ignore them but I don't overreact to them either. Until this morning. He was really upset this morning about something, threating to hurt himself, and out of the blue he asked me what cutting meant. When I asked where he heard this term, he showed me a handout associated with an educational program dealing with different types of addictions. Cutting was mentioned as an addiction. I have no idea how this subject was presented in school but it clearly had caught his attention.

Do you think realization that people SI could result in a child actually attempting it?

[Cthomas]

Yes i do think that learning can start SI. i didnt learn from anybody. I honestly didnt, i happened upon it in an attempt at suicide. i realized the pain from cutting helped and then thats how it started.

You are a good mom. I hope this works out well. But yes i do think children listen and copy what they hear, and yes it is an addiction, in the beginning its a coping mechanism but imho it becomes addiction.

Hope this helps.

Colleen

[psychoticcounselor]

i actually saw a tv show where the girl did it for relief. one day i was fighting horribley with my family ( before i went to counseling and meds) and i just thought i would try it. ever since i had been hooked.

[Kiya]

Yes, Mckel, I do.... i have alters, and before i really knew what that meant, one of my kid alters got a hold of a young adult book called "Cut". That is when our cutting addiction started. She read the book three or four times. Up till then she'd only thought about cutting for about 2 years. She didn't try it until after the book. Now it is an addiction we can't seem to get out of. Been cutting for about 4 years. Prior to that was (and continues) suicide ideation all the time for as long as i can remember. I'd best not let any alters read about suicide attempts....
Good connections on your part.

[mandazzle]

I had heard about it, and how it enables people to cope with issues. When I was about 13 or 14 my mom did something to me, and I got so upset I just did it. I've been doing it ever since then.

[chaotic13]

Thank you all so much for sharing. I know there are some topics that the price of ignorance in childhood can be very harmful. I think up until this point my son has only threatened to hurt himself, never realizing that people actually do it. I've tried to calmly say that hurting yourself is not something to do..., ... And then immediately switch his attention to what he was feeling and to help him find positive ways to cope with the situation. I just got blindsided when in the middle of an anxiety outburst he asks the question about cutting. I just wasn't prepared. I think I did OK in handling it but I would have liked to have had time to think about my response more.

Thank you all so much

[sunrise]

McKell, I used to cut as a teenager. I had never heard of it before but discovered it on my own, I'm not sure how. I just found that it really helped me cope with my emotional pain. I never told anyone that I did it because I thought it was so deviant. When I left home and went away to college, a lot of my emotional pain disappeared and so I stopped cutting. About a decade later I read an article in Time or Newsweek about cutting. I was astounded that other people besides myself used this as a coping mechanism! I had thought I was so creative and unique. It really did help me deal with stuff back then, but I am glad this was something that didn't last into adulthood for me.

I hope you can find some help for your son. If he is thinking about self-injury, could it indicate some other pain somewhere in his life? Maybe your T would have some helpful insights.

[bchlyn]

Mckel... i started cutting when i was about 9 prior to that i would bite my arm... squeeze objects in my hand ... bang my head... or pull my hair... it started as away not to feel the physical & emotional pain while i was being abused... i found that when i squeezed sharp objects it would take me to a place where i wasn't aware of what was happening to me... it just kind of evolved... now in response to your question about if i think hearing about it can trigger si... i know it triggers the urges ... i pretty much only cut during abusive situations...when my marriage ended it pretty much stopped ... there were a couple times but,i hadn't cut for more then 12 years... i was in a support group where a couple of the members cut...i hit bottom and was finding myself considering suicide(actually more then considering)... i started again as a was of checking to see if things got too bad could i follow through...and after that it took on a life of it's own...and now the thought to cut is there just about all the time ...lyn

Interesting question.

I have been cutting for 20 years. I started when I was around 10 and I did it to feel something after being abused. It sounds bizarre, but I had dissociated and felt so surreal that I remember taking a pen knife and first trying to stab myself and then cutting myself. It instantly "grounded me."

Since then, I have used cutting for that reason.
But, I had no concious motive. I never heard of it, and it was not until I was in foster care that it was first addressed by a therapist.
While I wanted to hurt myself, cutting was not the answer to that thought. I literally had no concept of what I was doing.

I am trying to stop, but it is tough. And going on and off through therapy was not the best solution. It would have been better if I could have stayed in therapy for an extensive period of time. Maybe this time I will be able.

[Kiya]

Lyn, your post reminds me that i used to suck on my arm, in 5th grade... purposely to bruise it (like a hicky)- but I did it all day long. After a while it did cause pain and i did it more for that reason. Those "bruises" lasted a long time.
I did have another form of re-acting out what was happening to me.. I won't be detailed here.. but i did that fairly often - starting when i was 6. it was a form of punishment. I also used to hold my breath under water in the bath tub trying to see if i would dround or pass out. Eventually that worked as a way to punish myself as well. that was in the 6-7 age and continued for several years.
These days, in therapy, when we're on topics that make me uneasy or i know i have switched, i dig my fingernails into my arm.
oh (heh - this is reminding me of all kinds of things)... i used to pick scabs - we lived out in no man's land with thousands of mosquitos and i would pick the bites on my head and bleed them - then pick the scabs. I was always bleeding - or blowing my nose on purpose until it would bleed - and keep the nose bleed going for as long as i could before i got in trouble. I was a weird kid. I was always accident prone and kept a running tally of my bruises. I counted 47 one day. The dr pulled my mom away from me to ask me if i was being hurt. he didn't believe me but was looking in the wrong place.
During the worst of it (a three yr period), i got severe leg cramps and charley horses right at bed time. If i didn't have to go to bed, they went away and returned the instant it was bed time. mom thought i was faking - i but i wasn't. it was my body trying to rescue me from what was happening at night.
and i took on dangerous behavior; being a tom boy and jumping out of trees and of really high swings, playing wtih snakes. cactus, and fire, being a dare devil... ahhhhhhhh i haven't thought of those things in ages.

When i was 13 i didnt know anything about cutting or suicide. It just wasnt anything i had ever heard about. I became friends with this girl named Kayleigh who cut and was always suicidal. I made her my "project" i wanted to help her so bad and we became best friends. She always talked to me about what she went through at home and how she coped (cutting and drinking) I would always try to be supportive and give her these long lectures about why she shouldnt do that and she always called me when she was suicidal and i helped talk her out of it. I never really understood how she could do those things to herself. It didnt make sense to me. Well when i was 14 things got bad in my house, some of same things that she had to deal with and some worse but she and I werent friends much anymore because she got sent away for a bit. I meet this new girl name Kayla and she cut herself because she thought it was funny and liked how it looked on her arm. That really confused me. So here i am 14 and everything is getting worse and worse for me at home and everyone around me is doing this cutting thing. Then we had a guidance presentation about drug abuse and self harm. The teacher said "a lot of teenagers cut themselves once and if they are normal it hurts and they never do it again, but if they are emotionally hurting it works for them" so i thought about that and i was like oh a lot of teenagers to this, then whats the problem? So one day my mom flipped out on me and started telling me all the negative things about me and i lost it. I sat in my room crying with a knife in my hand and i cut my self 3 times on my left arm. The next day i went to school and kayla saw my arm at lunch and said DID YOU CUT?! really loud and i immediatly snapped back no my cat did it and she said yeah right thats what i always tell my mom. I actually didnt stay friends with this girl for long because i was afraid of people finding out but I have done it ever since...
so to answer your question, yes, if i didnt learn that all these kids in my school did it i wouldnt have ever thought to do it.

[sujunew]

my answer is very much the same as sunshine's...I had never EVER heard of SI before, and not even until a few years after I started. As a 6yr old I used to pull the skin off my lips til they bled, perhaps from anxiety??? And when I was 14 I started ODing on painkillers (not to a huge degree) just to numb thing out. I 1st cut when I went on a 2mth overseas exchange. I was horribly homesick for 6 of the 8 weeks there, but it was in the final week that I 'happened' upon SI purely by accident- I tried to write something on my hand and my ink pen ran out of ink. It made a very red mark, which was oddly soothing, and then I found a tool that made it worse but made me feel better. I was totally ashamed and hid my hand (a very hard thing to do ) until the scars faded a little. Then, just over a year later when I moved out of home and into a halls of residence I was horrendously homesick again and found myself SIing on a regular basis. It wasn't until I needed to seek medical treatment that I 1st heard the phrase "self harm", and even then nothing was really done about it until after I was admitted to hospital 3x for ODs and SI. It is still a very much 'unknown' subject here, and ppl never talk about it. But as lyn said earlier too, every time I hear about SI it triggers serious urges that I usually cannot control, although it is getting better.

[chaotic13]

The question I have is do the teachers presenting this stuff in school realize that acknowledging that telling kids that people actually deliberately harm themselves and that it helps or relieves their emotional pain in some way, can give a child the insight to try this activity? I understand that drugs are so prevalent in society that the facts need to be presented because the exposure is inevitable. But cutting just seems to me not as mainstream. Kids are not necessarily going to see this behavior in prime time TV or the effects of it on the open street. It just seems like including this behavior as if it as prevalent and socially acceptable as drug, tobacco, and alcohol use doesn't seem to add up. I didn't expect cutting to be a topic in a elementary school DARE program.

[Kiya]

I even had it in my 6th grade class (and I'm 31). Only after that did I notice a kid in my class had cigerette burns on his arms. I thought at the time maybe his parents did it to him.
Course, that was in California - always more progressive than most other places.
But it may be time some one tells them that they are contributing to the problem. that instead, teachers should notice such injuries and send the kids to talk to counselors about it.
Good questions Mckell

[silentcry]

I started SI behavior in junior high. I have no idea where I came up with the idea or anything. I just started one day and continued from there.

[kittyann]

i don't remember the age i was when i first cut. it sort of became something that i did instead of trying to suicide. age 13 was my first attempt to kill myself and it certainly wasn't my last. i didn't learn about cutting from anyone it just sort of became this thing i did to make me feel better. it helps me to deal with the emotional pain that i can't express.

helping your son deal with his emotional pain will go a long way with stopping him from developing this behavior. cutting just makes you feel better at first. later it becomes something that your body craves. i often say that my arms are screaming to be cut because that is what it feels like. it is an addiction to say the least, but there are other forms of self injury that you should watch for. burning, pulling out one's hair, breaking one's bones, bruising oneself, etc. these are just a few of the types of self injury that people do.

good luck with your son and just try to make him feel safe to express his feelings without smothering him and he should be fine.

[chaotic13]

Thank you everyone for providing me with information on SI.

I've been thinking about my reaction to this situation. His actions and questions triggered a lot of fear. I think my concerns are justifiable and I need to pay close attention for other signs of this type of behavior. I think my response to my son was OK. I just need to be careful to separate the past from the present.

[bchlyn]

you know in an attempt to help me put things into perspective my t asks me all the time what i would say if it was my granddaughter cutting... i can't begin to imagine what it would be like... my love for her is so intense... i wish i cared half as much about me... your asking the hard questions... keep it up... i think that the schools are trying to educate the kids before they follow through the first time... i don't know what the answer is... because not dealing isn't the answer either... when i started... it was pretty much ignored... and not addressed... if it had been it would have been looked at much differently then it is now...you may have already answered this so if you have forgive me.... is your son in t to help him with his anxiety... that really helped my boys when they were little...lyn

[dalila]

<font color="green">When I was 8 or 9 I realized that seeing the blood flow from picking scabs helped me feel better so I tried using pins. I slowly escolated from there to full blown cutting. Now I am struggling to stop. </font>

[chaotic13]

I spoke with my T about this and if by telling kids about it they might be inadvertently promoting exploration. I mentioned that I didn't think it was as prevalent or as visible as other addictive behaviors. She said that SI is increasing and is now considered typical adolescent behavior. She said that by jr hs most kids come in contact with kids who SI. I didn't realize this. Thanks to PC and my T I have more information about this. I also had a quick conversation about something I do that is borderline.